Safe in the Studio: Susan Burnstine

Posted on Apr 16, 2020

While our gallery’s doors are closed temporarily due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Catherine Couturier Gallery is pleased to announce a blog series entitled Safe in the Studiofeaturing a new gallery artist each week. Our artists will share behind-the-scenes information about specific pieces and offer insight into their artist practice. With each blog post, three works will be highlighted and discounted 20% for one week following the post’s publishing date.

Last week, Catherine Couturier Gallery featured gallery artist Wendi Schneider. This week, the gallery is pleased to present the following post by gallery artist Susan Burnstine:

What does an artist do when the work they create relies on locations across the United States found far outside their current shelter-in-place? Solving that answer has been my main task for the past five weeks. I organized my closet and binged a TV show (Ozark Season 3), but now what? I am one who prefers turning inward to create, so the TV wore its welcome out after ten outstanding one-hour episodes.

Lost Highway

Over the past five weeks, I have developed a routine of getting up in the morning, feeding my dog Raven, then letting her bolt outside to chase the same squirrels that clearly suffer from amnesia since they continually forget it’s a grave mistake to return to our modest domain. Apologies to the Sciuridaes of America, but this recurring Groundhog Day-like canine versus rodent routine cracks me up on a daily basis. And laughter, no matter how it finds you, is a much-welcomed commodity these days.

Raven

So, I start every day the very same way - laughing at my dog’s antics. Then I sit at my desk, gaze out my window from atop of Laurel Canyon, observe how the skies are as clear as they’ve ever been in Los Angeles and revel as I receive more frequent visits from passing deer, red tailed hawks, falcons, coyotes, hummingbirds and owls ever since the streets have cleared. The irony of nature’s resurgence in the face of such tragedy does not escape me, as the marriage of beauty and light found within the darkness is at the core of every image I create.

With the streets of Hollywood resembling abandoned movie sets, this could have been a creatively rich time for me to interpret my unconscious experiences metaphorically with my homemade medium format film cameras and lenses, but wandering the streets is not a realistic option as I am simultaneously recovering from surgery. Instead, I’ve spent the majority of my isolation culling through stacks of color negatives that have been filed next to my desk since 2017 when I began my ongoing series Where Shadows Cease: Resonance of America’s Dream.

Beyond Manhattan

For years, I translated my unconscious world as an introspective solo journey, but this newest series has shifted to a wider inquiry of universal beliefs that reflect the collective hopes, fears and aspirations found in the social topography of the United States. Flipping through one negative sleeve after another, I’ve considered how my work might evolve as the world experiences inconceivable loss and change.

At the Point

Growing up in Chicago, the grandchild of immigrants who came with nothing and found success, my family personified the American Dream. I was raised in the bubble of that dream. Our yearly family summer road trips visiting iconic cities, national monuments and parks generated immense adoration and pride in our land and those remembrances resonate to this day. But as this country encounters unprecedented challenges, the promises and principles that fueled this national ethos have created persistent uncertainties concerning our collective future and subsequently altered my unconscious landscape.

Over the past few years, I’ve visited iconic locations and landscapes across the United States to explore the corridors of this land through visual metaphor and symbolism and uncover the hidden uniformities that reside within the nations’ collective unconscious. By infusing common dream themes and symbols found within the familiar, I have observed commonly shared memories and universal representations found at places connected to the ethos of the “American Dream.”

For Safe in the Studio, I have chosen three images that personify my American Dream.

- Susan Burnstine

The following three pieces are available to purchase with a20% discountin each size for the next week. The discount will no longer be applicable on orders made afterThursday, April 23, 2020 at 11:59PM.